TORONTO, March 22, 2013 -- The message from
leading travel industry executives is clear: business travel in Canada
is in a
full recovery mode. Demand for air travel and hotel stays amongst
business
travellers is up in 2013, and business and meeting planning is growing
exponentially, according to senior travel executives from Best Western
International,
Concur,
the Global
Business Travel Association (GBTA) in Canada and Vision 2000 at
the annual
Business Travel Summit in Toronto last week.
Domestic air travel is expected to grow
almost five percent
and hotel stays are growing four percent according to the GBTA 2013
Industry
Pulse Report issued in February. Although business travel budgets this
year
have increased slightly by three percent, more travellers are on the
road more
often, according to GBTA Canada President Tanya Racz .
Best Western's Senior Vice President of
Sales and Marketing Dorothy
Dowling added, "While demand is up one to two percent for corporate
travel, what we're starting to see over the past two years is that rate
is also
starting to improve, which is good news for the lodging industry."
Vision
2000 also reported business and meeting planning is up more than 15
percent in
2013 compared to last year.
While the travel industry continues to place
a significant
emphasis on social media channels and mobile sites, executives
indicated that
travellers value the content as they research travel, or "look to
book," but the sites don't necessarily drive a significant volume of
bookings.
"The information gathering stage for
business
travellers continues to escalate and all travel providers need to
provide
powerful content on the web for them to best make their travel
decisions. While
mobile is being used as an information source, it's not necessarily a
transaction source yet," said Dowling. "A corporate traveller might
have four or five choices of where they can book but they still go to
the
Internet to evaluate and research content before they choose where to
stay.
We've found that business travellers primarily view images and look at
room
types along with reading reviews, as they want to see what other
travellers are
saying about the property."
Vision 2000 reports that 30 percent of its
corporate travel
clients use the brand's mobile booking options. "For corporate
travellers,
online adoption is increasing but from a knowledge standpoint, these
travellers
are still calling their travel advisors to help with preliminary
research for
their trips, " said Vision 2000 COO Brian Robertson . "While more
corporate travellers are booking themselves online, we're supporting
both the
online and full-service environment and are aggregating content from
all
available sources, including direct booking sites, GDS sites, our
online tool
and Concur. The content is coming from everywhere."
Each executive agreed that social media and
web services are
increasingly playing a role in communication with the business
traveller.
Dowling said that Best Western values social media and review sites,
such as
TripAdvisor, as a listening tool to understand its customers and their
points
of view. Vision 2000's Robertson indicated that more than ever they
look to
chat functions, such as Salesforce Chatter, to have instant dialogue
with its
clients. Concur's Executive Vice President of Supplier Management,
Michael
Koetting , finds that business travellers are more likely to share
itineraries
with its TripIt tool through LinkedIn, as they are often more
interested in
seeing what their fellow business travellers have to say about a hotel
or
destination as opposed to the general public on TripAdvisor.
When it comes to who's making the travel
decisions, what's
true for leisure travel is true for business travel. According to Best
Western's Dowling, recent surveys show that 85 percent of the travel
decision
making in North America is controlled by women, with women representing
more
than half of all business travellers that stay with Best Western.
With a growing number of female business
travellers on the
road, travel brands are placing a stronger emphasis on helping ensure
their
safety.
"Our 'duty of care' begins with knowing
where
travellers are at all times," said Concur's Koetting. "Progressive
travel managers are beginning to allow travellers more flexibility in
how they
book travel with online channels and such, but they are required to
share the
data so that the company knows where the traveller is."
Vision 2000's Robertson added, "When booking
travel for
those on the road by themselves, both men and women, we have to take
into
consideration and respect their accommodation requests such as
providing hotel
rooms near elevators, dining in open environments, looking at gyms with
glass
doors and such to make a traveler feel safe."
GBTA's Racz said that historically, risk
management in many
companies floated around without a clear distinct owner, but a recent
travel
risk management survey of 125 companies identified corporate travel as
the
owner.
As millennials enter the workforce, managed
travel programs
are being impacted. Koetting said, "Millennials want more freedom to
book
wherever they want and that can complicate the inherent duty of care.
Companies
are trying to adapt to the expectations of millennials and this speaks
to the
need for new technology that can enable that duty of care."
ABOUT BEST WESTERN INTERNATIONAL
Best Western International, Inc., headquartered in Phoenix,
Ariz., is a
privately held hotel brand made up of more than 4,000* BEST WESTERN®, BEST WESTERN PLUS, BEST
WESTERN PREMIER
hotels in more than 100* countries and territories worldwide. Now
celebrating
67 years of hospitality, Best Western welcomes hundreds of thousands of
guests
nightly. Best Western provides its hoteliers with global operational,
sales,
marketing and promotional support, and online and mobile booking
capabilities.
More than 15 million travelers are members of the brand's award-winning
loyalty
program Best
Western Rewards®, one of the few programs in which members earn
points that
never expire and can be redeemed at any Best Western hotel worldwide.
The
brand's partnerships with AAA/CAA, race car driver Michael Waltrip ,
and
Harley-Davidson® provide travelers with exciting ways to interact
with the
brand. In 2012, Best Western won a record number of awards, including
AAA's
Hotel Partner of the Year, CAA's Partner of the Year, TravelClick's
eMarketer
of the Year and Compuware's Best of the Web Gold awards. For more
information
or to make a reservation, please visit www.bestwestern.com.
*Numbers are approximate and may fluctuate.
ABOUT CONCUR
Concur is a leading provider of integrated travel and expense
management
solutions. Concur's easy-to-use Web-based and mobile solutions help
companies
and their employees control costs and save time. Concur Connect is the
platform
that enables the entire travel and expense ecosystem of customers,
suppliers,
and developers to access and extend Concur's T&E cloud. Concur's
systems
adapt to individual employee preferences and scale to meet the needs of
companies from small to large. Learn more at www.concur.com
or the Concur Blog.
ABOUT GBTA
The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) is the world's
premier
business travel and meetings organization. Collectively, GBTA's
5,000-plus
members manage over $340 billion of global business travel and meetings
expenditures annually. GBTA provides its network of 17,000 business and
government travel and meetings managers, as well as travel service
providers,
with networking events, news, education & professional development,
research, and advocacy. For more information, visit gbta.org.
ABOUT VISION 2000
Vision 2000 Travel Group Inc. is the largest Canadian owned
travel
management company. A Leader in travel management, Vision 2000 provides
a full
range of Corporate Solutions, Meetings & Events, Cruises &
Vacations
and World Tours travel related services from over 30 full service and
corporate
onsite locations. Vision 2000 is currently the leading Canadian member
and Top
10 globally in Virtuoso, the world's leading Luxury Travel Network.
Vision 2000
is the Canadian shareholder agency of RADIUS -- the global travel
company.
RADIUS is one of the largest travel management companies in the world
and is
well positioned to service multinational corporate clients on a global
basis. RADIUS
operates from more than 3,600 locations in over 80 countries worldwide
and has
an annual sales turnover of USD $20 billion.